October CPU, Hyperion, Diagnosis, EBS, Morgan's Library

The October 2009 CPU is Out

This is another very important CPU to implement. Several high risk vulnerabilities are fixed in this CPU. Here's a good place to start working with it.

A word on one-off patching vs larger patchsets. Applying patches is rarely fun (ok, I admit it, it's never really fun, but I saw someone smile once while the files changes flew by on the screen). But it is good to recall that although one-off patches touch less code and thus seem to carry less risk, they lack the iterative testing that is done on larger collections of patches such as the CPU. Life is all about tradeoffs and compromises, so these factors are something to keep in mind.

Clouds of Hyperion

Sounds like poetry, albeit buzzword poetry. This posting at Tim Tow's blog looks to the future and a product to let you easily move things in and out of clouds.

Diagnosis

The metaphor of clinical concepts and IT continues at Edgewater Technologies blog with this post on diagnosis. I've always liked medical metaphors in IT, particularly in performance optimization. One of my favorite aphorisms from medical diagnostics applies very well to performance problems: If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. It's tempting to dig around in obscure internals and figure out some kind of latching linkages correlated to phases of the moon. But it's usually more productive to figure out what has changed and either improve it or change things back to the way they were before the problem.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.0 Supported with Oracle E-Business Suite

E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 Certified on Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)

Using Oracle Application Server 10g with E-Business Suite (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

Morgan's Library

Kevin Closson points out a great resource this week, Morgan's Library. I don't think we've blogged about it here before. And now we have.

PeopleSoft 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50 Webcast

Join us on Wednesday, October 28, 2:00 PM EST for this special webcast: Introducing PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50. We’ll cover:

• Newest capabilities demonstration
• Embedded Web 2.0 capabilities and industry-specific enhancements
• Robust Talent Management features and new Succession Planning solution
• Enhanced Financials Management
• Industry-specific applications for education and research, public sector, retail, and professional services.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Support is pleased to announce the availability of the ComputerWorld Paper on My Oracle Support. This industry paper articulates why the proactive and personalized capabilities of My Oracle Support are having such an impact in the support industry. The paper covers multiple customer testimonials and an analyst perspective on why My Oracle Support is key to any support strategy. Read the article at:
http://www.computerworld.com/pdfs/a_oracle_stimulus2.pdf

Classic MetaLink Retires Nov 6: Essential My Oracle Support Customer Training Now Available

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor



Classic MetaLink Retires Nov 6: Essential My Oracle Support Customer Training Now Available



During the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, My Oracle Support, Oracle's next-generation customer support platform, will be upgraded and Classic MetaLink will be retired. Oracle is providing free training on My Oracle Support to help customers through this transition. Read more here here to learn about the training available.

EBS, APEX, Hyperion, Triage

EBS

The good folks from Oracle E-Business Suite Technology are out at OpenWorld this week, but still found time to post some valuable info on...OpenWorld 2009: E-Business Suite Technology Stack Certification Roadmap

APEX

The Application Express Listener Early Adopter is now available here.

Hyperion

Over at 'in 2 Hyperion' we have a posting on an Excel feature, custom lists, that many use and few know about, and how to combine it with Smartview: Compliment the Excel Add-In or SmartView with Excel Custom Lists.

Feel like bragging about how you have the biggest Essbase install in the cosmos? Well it has to be bigger than the one described here at Tim Tow's blog to qualify.

Are you a developer looking at Hyperion's complexities and wondering how all the pieces fit together, particularly Planning? This article from Rittman Mead Consulting is a good start toward clarity.

IT Philosophy: Triage and Queuing

I sense a resonance between these two postings, one, at Edgewater Technology's blog, speaks of project triage, a very high level concept, another, at The ORACLE-BASE Blog, goes down into the code to discuss queuing, another form of triage. Triage runs from the queing on the CPU all the way up to the user's daily calendar entries, it is a concept that should always be kept in mind when planning and building projects. It is also the most fundamental element of Oracle Support. Something is broken, or you don't know how to get the product to do what you need, you make an appointment with the doctor (file an SR) and the doctor (a combination of Oracle's internal workflow's interaction with the your profile and how you answer the questions when opening the SR and the actual support engineers) , sees you. Responses range from an unhurried process of preventive care (Sev 4) to rushing your DB to intensive care (Sev1). For Priority Service users you are near the front of the line as soon as you hit the submit button on the SR, and also have better ability to call in specialists if the problem is exotic, but the triage concept remains throughout. When is it time to think of triage? When the workflow gets out of whack. Wrong prioritization can lead to needless waste and damage. Increasing the priority of some tasks for politics or appearance' sake can cause harm, so can 'cry wolf' syndrome (i.e. if you always claim that any problem, even something minor, is a world-ending problem from hell). Artificially inflated priorities can wear out IT staff and waste money, ultimately slowing down the very project it was supposed to be expediting. Intelligent triage, though sometimes seeming harsh, will benefit your bottom line.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Enterprise Architecture is always a hot topic. Learn more about it at Oracle's Enterprise Architecture Center:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/architect/entarch/index.html

Training Classes PeopleTools 8.50

Contributed by Linda Corniola, Infogram Contributor

Training PeopleTools 8.50

In case you were wondering, we are preparing lots of training classes for Tools 8.50. By Oracle Open World customers will be able to schedule themselves on the Oracle University website (oracle.com/education) for the following classes (Note that these classes are not available yet, names may change etc... ):

PeopleTools 1 rel. 8.50
PeopleTools 2 rel. 8.50
PeopleTools 1 & 2 Accelerated rel. 8.50
PeopleCode rel. 8.50
SQR for PeopleSoft rel. 8.50
Application Engine rel. 8.50
PeopleCode/SQR Accelerated training rel. 8.50
PeopleCode/Application Engine Accelerated